Nest purchased Dropcam last year, and now it looks like the smarthome device maker is ready to show off what it's doing with Dropcam's technology.
At a morning press event in San Francisco, Nest trotted out a refresh of its entire product line, before introducing the Nest Cam. (The Cam wasn't exactly a surprise since Best Buy accidentally posted it for sale a few hours beforehand. Oops.) The tiny, black camera is the company's first new product since Google bought Nest in January of 2014, but it's not as groundbreaking as its past announcements, since it's based part-and-parcel on Dropcam. It just adds better specs.
Nest Cam is a home security camera that records 1080p video (Dropcam offered 720p) and boasts a 130-degree field of view. It's affixed to a streamlined base with a magnet, so you can slap it on your fridge if you want. Camera junkies also have the option to mount it on a tripod.
It has a microphone so it can listen to sounds coming from your house, and it even has eight infrared night vision LEDs. Like all Nest products, it has an accompanying app for Android and iOS that gives you remote control over the device. If you're away and Nest Cam picks up sound or motion in your home, it will alert you on your phone.
Nest Cam is available to ship today (hi again, Best Buy!) for $199.
Accompanying Nest Cam is a new back-end service called Nest Aware, which tracks your camera's data and keeps recordings of it. Nest Aware automatically stores a minimum of ten days of recordings, or you can max it out to thirty days if you're willing to pay extra. Throw the party of the century over the weekend? Nest Aware will highlight and summarize specific recording times so you don't have to sit through hours of boring video. If you find something you like, you can extract a clip and share it with your friends online. You can even make timelapse videos.
Nest Aware starts at $10 a month per camera.
Before rolling out this shiny new product, Nest announced its product refreshes starting with the Thermostat. A free software update is being rolled out over the next two weeks to all users, which will add a feature for shutting off your system's fan, and add notification alerts when in-home temperature becomes a safety risk.
The company's second product, the Nest Protect, skipped a software update in favor of all-new hardware. The second-generation Nest Protect looks similar to the original, but is 11% smaller and is reportedly easier to mount on your wall or ceiling. It comes with new capabilities like interacting with your Nest Thermostat to tell it when to turn off, and sending users notifications.
Nest Protect 2 reduces unnecessary alarms, such as when steam emanates from the stove. The new Protect will let users mute alarms right from its smartphone app, and adds its speaker to the list of things it tests automatically once a month. The second generation Nest Protect goes on sale in July. It will cost the same price as the original Protect: $99. Nest claims it will last for ten years, which is three years more than the original Protect.
Other announcements at the event included mentions of Nest's API, which there are 9,000 developers currently working on, including big names like Whirlpool and Bosch. And a new program called Nest Safety Rewards, where insurance companies will reward Nest device owners for being safety-conscious.
